Creative Writing
by Rowena Zahnrei
Summary: Written in response to a special request. Data joins Counselor Troi's creative writing workshop in an attempt to determine if he can come up with an original story. This story features a couple of my own original stories set inside a TNG frame. COMPLETE! Please review! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the inserted poem and stories that say "BY ME" are by me and are entirely mine. Please don't sue me or steal my stories. Thanks! :)

Hi everyone! I'm back from my self-imposed hiatus. My revisions are FINALLY DONE! And, it's so great to be able to play with my stories again! :)

I mentioned in that rant thing I ranted at the start of "Croaked" that my mind rebelled when I first imposed my creative writing hiatus on myself and it spat out a bunch of stories it wasn't supposed to spit out, like "Croaked." I was asked in a PM to share the other stories, original stories. I don't usually share my original stuff online, but for these I figured 'why not,' so I'm sticking them in a TNG frame and hanging them here for your perusal. The scenario Data shares is based on an original play I wrote called "Knit-Picking." That play is way too long to share in this little story, so I had Data summarize it (in terms of Sherlock Holmes). I did include the full text of my story "Marooned" and my poem "The Man of Many Hats," though. "Hats" wasn't one of my rebellious blurbs, like "Knit-Picking" and "Marooned." I included it purely because I like it. Please let me know what you think! :)

* * *

Creative Writing

By Rowena Zahnrei

"Your 'clay-acting' suggestion went so well, Counselor," enthused the ship's primary school principal, Dr. Emily Piper. "The children are still talking about it! And, not just because of the strange incident with that…what was it called?"

"The D'Arsay Archive," Counselor Troi told her.

Dr. Piper gave an involuntary shiver.

"Yes, that. Will Mr. Data be joining us again this afternoon, for your creative writing workshop?"

"He told me he's planning on it," Troi said, "so unless something comes up on the bridge, he'll be here."

"Well, that's just wonderful," Dr. Piper said happily. "He and the children do get along so well, and I think it's good for them to interact with a life form as unique as – oh, Mr. Data, hello! Welcome to our classroom!"

The pale android politely inclined his head.

"Thank you, Dr. Piper," he said, and turned his golden eyes to Troi. "Good afternoon, Counselor."

"I hope you brought your imagination with you today, Commander," Dr. Piper said cheerily. "The Counselor, here, promises to give our creative minds quite a work out!"

"That is why I decided to attend," Data said. "While I have attempted a number of artistic endeavors in my time aboard the _Enterprise_ , including painting, sculpture, poetry, and music, my experience with creative writing is rather limited. I am curious as to whether I am capable of crafting a truly original story."

Troi smiled at him.

"Well, grab a padd and find a seat," she said, indicating the pile of gray, electronic data padds at the end of the long desk. "We start in six minutes."

* * *

"All right, everyone, padds down," the counselor said, smiling as she walked between the desks and tables. A few of the children hurried to squeeze in a few extra words, but most had already finished writing several minutes before.

"So, we just spent the last ten minutes writing anything that flowed into our minds," she said. "Would anyone like to share their thoughts with the group?"

A few hands popped up – including a large, white-gold one. Troi acknowledged Data, but held up a staying finger, calling instead on a boy in the front row.

"Eric, why don't you start us off," she invited.

The dark-skinned boy took his padd, and a deep breath, and began to read in a quick, over-loud voice:

" **The Man of Many Hats**

 **By Me**

Joseph is the Man of Many Hats

Jane is the Girl of Many Faces

Joseph says to Jane, "I like your spats!"

Jane tells Joe: "I like your sparkling laces!"

That's the way their love began

But their love couldn't last.

Joseph had a restless mind

And Jane could not relax.

Every day they'd shout and scream

And throw things out the door.

One day, their son said he couldn't take it anymore!

Kyle took his father's hats

And learned his mother's faces.

Now he travels 'round the world

To multi-colored places.

Every day is something fresh

And each place somewhere new

For, he's the Man of Many Hats

And Many Faces too!

The End," Eric finished, to a brief smattering of applause. He flushed a little and ducked his head.

"That was very interesting, Eric," Troi said. "What would you say it's about?"

Eric shrugged.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess, it's like, Joseph and Jane were each ever only known for one thing, you know? Her faces and his hats. When they finally met someone who saw something else about them…their shoes…I guess they thought they were in love. But Kyle watched them and he knew better. He didn't want to get put in some box, like his parents, so he learned what he could and ran away to do his own thing. It's kind of like…what I'm always telling my parents… About why I don't want to join Starfleet and have to worry about rank and getting promoted all the time."

His head lowered further at the confession, and Troi gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

"It's all right to have dreams and ambitions that are different from those of your parents," she told him. "I'd like you to show them this poem, Eric. Tell them how you've been feeling. Will you do that?"

Eric shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess," he said, and the counselor smiled at him.

"OK, who'd like to go next," she asked the group. "Data, I believe I saw your hand."

"You did, Counselor," Data confirmed. "In the ten minutes allotted, I wrote a holodeck program based in the world of Sherlock Holmes originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

"Why a holodeck program?" Troi asked curiously, not even marveling that the android could craft such a program so quickly.

"Based on past experience with my poetry, I estimate that, were I to write a short story, there is only a 12.3 percent chance that anyone besides you, Counselor, and perhaps a few interested parties at the Daystrom Institute, would be willing to read it without some measure of…coercion. A holodeck program is interactive. I chose the already extant world and characters of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes because I wish to share my creative endeavor and Geordi would be 86.79 percent more willing to try a new Sherlock Holmes story than a truly original scenario."

"Hmm," Troi said, unhappy with his claims but unable to refute them. "Well, what story did you come up with?" she asked.

"I shall summarize, for the sake of time," he said. "In this scenario, Holmes and Watson are confronted with the apparent strangulation of a young and very popular tennis celebrity. Although there are many suspects, the true culprit is the grandmother of a young female fan. The grandmother suffers from paranoia, a symptom of the onset of dementia, and misinterprets her granddaughter's dreams of meeting the young star as declarations of love…cruelly unrequited. Holmes comes to suspect the old woman when he realizes what he initially thought were finger marks on the victim's neck were actually caused by thick, rib-stitch knitting. He recalls: when the police took the granddaughter's statement, the old woman was wearing a new, hand knit rib-stitch sweater. Holmes speculates the old woman could have used the unfinished sleeve of that sweater to strangle the young tennis star, thus leaving the misleading marks on his neck, then stitched the sleeve to the body of the sweater, thus concealing the murder weapon in plain sight."

"Data, that's incredible," Troi said. "And, you were worried you wouldn't be able to come up with something original!"

"On the contrary, Counselor, I find myself dissatisfied with the 'originality' of this story," the android told her, his eyes fixed on the table. "It contains many highly derivative elements. Apart from involving characters and settings not my own, Poe's 'The Purloined Letter,' features a piece of key evidence being hidden in plain sight, and a previous Holmes scenario I shared with Geordi and Dr. Pulaski included an old woman strangling a larger man with a beaded scarf that left finger-like marks on the victim's neck."

"But, Data, don't you see, that's how imagination works," Troi said. "You draw on memories and experiences, filter them through your own thoughts and interpretations, and come out with a story told from an entirely different angle. Your character uses knitting, not beads, as a weapon, and she wears it when the police come – she doesn't fold it up and place it with other sweaters, like one letter placed among other letters. I'm sure the motive for the crime is similarly unique."

Data tilted his head, considering.

"The woman with the beads acted in self-defense," Data acknowledged. "My character acts in what she, mistakenly, believes to be defense of her granddaughter, and it is her illness that drives her."

"There you go," Troi said. "You have an original character, an original motive and, therefore, an original story. Well done!"

Data looked pleased, the corners of his mouth pulling upwards in a very slight smile.

Troi beamed at him, then said, "All right, we've done our ten minute warm-up. Now, it's time to get to the real writing. You have half an hour to write an original short story on the following topic: asteroids. Time begins…now!"

* * *

Mira finished writing, then looked around, feeling rather uncertain.

"Mira, are you all right?" Troi asked, coming up beside her.

"Yeah…" She shrugged. "I'm not sure I did this right," she admitted, holding her padd out for the counselor to take. "I mean…there's an asteroid in the story but it's not _about_ asteroids. Is that OK?"

"I'm sure it's fine, Mira," Troi assured her. "Would you mind reading your story out loud to the group?"

Mira blushed deeply and shrank down in her chair, but she nodded.

"Yeah…OK…. If you want… It's called:

 **Marooned**

 **By Me**

I watched Holly stride up the hill like she did every morning, two water buckets dangling heavily from the plastic pole she'd slung across her shoulders. She smiled at me and shouted, "Happy three-monthiversary, Xander! When you've collected enough pebblecakes, meet me in PriShelter-1 for the party!"

'Pebblecakes' was Holly's word for the pebble-looking mushrooms that grew wild on this awful asteroid. Holly had a lot of made-up words like that. Guess that's what comes of growing up on an isolated spacerock.

I didn't know how long Holly had been alone before I got dumped there, or just how her colony got wiped. I gathered she'd been pretty young when it happened. Vast sections of rubble and wrecked shelters covered half the asteroid, all overgrown with spindly stick bushes that broke off and rolled around like sagebrush when the wind was high. The only building Holly and I ever used was PriShelter-1. The rest of the ruined structures we left to the bug-like nightfliers and screechcrawlers that scuttered along the prefab walls.

I hefted the sack of pebblecakes and stood gazing across the rough landscape, so different from my home back on Io. There, Jupiter dominated the sky, its glow lending a deep reddish hue to the yellow domes of the mining camp where I grew up.

I hadn't planned to run away from home. It's just, my step-father has a way of getting me so furious...

My real Dad had been chief mining inspector, but he died in the big tunnel accident when I was six. My step-father was a junior then, but he wasted no time taking over. He took my Dad's job, his wife, and our big hut at Dome's Edge, but he couldn't take me.

"You don't have to like your step-father, honey," my mom said, "but you should treat him with more respect. He's been kind enough to pay for you to have the best education, the best clothes, the best food. We're lucky to have him."

I knew kindness had nothing to do with it. He liked the status and money marrying my mom had gotten him, and he only did all that stuff to keep her on his side. But, when she backed him over me during our last fight, I couldn't take it anymore. I waited for night and caught the red-eye shuttle to the docks, where I snuck aboard a merchant freighter headed for Mars.

It's not that unusual for teenagers to run off to space, especially colony kids. Sure, most of them are seventeen or eighteen and I was just fourteen, but I didn't see why that should make much difference. I guess I imagined the crew would take me in, show me the ropes, like the kid-heroes in those old holo-adventures my Dad and I used to watch together. I saw myself working my way up the ranks, taking the officer's exam at sixteen, earning my own command by twenty. The pride on my mother's face when I showed up at her door, tall and imposing in my Captain's uniform, would be worth all the hardship and loneliness of growing up a spacer.

I laid low for three days, keeping out of sight until I was sure we'd gone too far to easily turn back. Then, I made my way to the bridge and formally asked the captain to make me part of her crew. She informed me I was a missing person and it was illegal for merchant ships to hire minors. She then said, since she couldn't afford to be late with her shipment, I'd be dropped off on some space-forsaken asteroid colony. A supply ship would pick me up in a week or so and haul my butt back to Io to face the cops, my mom, and my step-father.

Well, a week passed and no supply ship came. By then I was down to the last three survival rations the captain had been kind enough to spare me. Frightened and desperate, I made the dangerous choice to leave my emergency tent and brave the cold, bug-infested desert in search of food. Two days later, I stumbled into PriShelter-1...where I met Holly.

It used to annoy me, how much Holly knew. Basic survival stuff, like how to filter the coppery water that bubbled yellow from the ground, how to tell a pebblecake from a rock, where to dig for sugar roots, how to light the firestones for cooking. This weird girl with her weird way of talking was probably a year younger than me, but she seemed more independent, efficient, and responsible than any adult I'd ever met.

"Xander, the sugar-roots are boiling!" Holly shouted from the shelter. "This will be the greatest Xander party. Last month was good, but the sugar-roots weren't grown then, and now we can mash them fancy for the feast! Need help with the pebblecakes, Xander?"

The monthiversary feasts were all Holly's idea; sort of her way of celebrating not being alone. Mostly, she did that by saying my name as often as she could, as if trying to prove I was real. But for me, these 'monthiversary' things were mostly reminders of how long I'd been there.

Still, this last time, the celebration felt a little different. Maybe I was getting used to the place. Maybe I'd realized I actually liked Holly's weirdness. Whatever it was, as we worked together side by side, slicing and mashing and preparing our feast, I looked at Holly smiling and babbling and laughing, and I realized I was happy. We were happy.

Holly and I went to our cots that night full to bursting and still giggling from our silly story game, where one of us started the story and the other had to finish it. Then, suddenly, the room was shaking and we saw huge fireballs raining from the sky. Impact after impact rattled the shelter. Holly screamed and thrashed, her brown hair a wild tangle, wet with tears. I ran to her, but she pushed me away, a wretched huddle of screaming terror, and I realized this must have been what happened, this was how her colony was destroyed. A meteor shower in an asteroid field.

The meteors kept raining fire and rock and I added my screams to the noise. Holly grabbed for my arms. I held her close and together we screamed out our fear, our anger, our desperate need to live.

The next morning, I woke to a strange, silent calm, only to see Holly's dirt-streaked face beside me. She opened her eyes and smiled at me and, when we sat up, she slowly leaned toward me...

The ground rumbled again, but not with the rattling violence of the meteorites. This was the rumble of engines.

Holly and I shared a look and I raced outside to see a red supply shuttle land on the hill beside our shelter. Two spacers climbed out and headed straight for me, squishing pebblecakes under their boots.

"Alexander Zebidian?" said one of the men.

"Xander," I said. "My Dad called me Xander."

"It's him," the second man said. "Come along, son. Time to go home."

"OK, but you have to take Holly too," I said. "She's been alone here since the meteors wiped out her colony."

The two men looked at Holly, then at me, then at each other.

The second spacer said, "Look kid, our orders are to take you, not some holo-sprite."

"You guys should clean your visors," I said. "Holly's not a hologram, she's a girl. And I won't leave without her!"

"Kid, I've seen these things before," the first spacer said. "They're robots, programmed to recite what happened to lost colonies like this. Hopefully so new colonists don't make the same mistakes. Now, either you come willingly or we knock you out and carry you."

"No!" I shrieked, dodging as the men reached for me. "Holly! Tell them who you are! Tell them you're real!"

But Holly just stood there, staring at the men with an odd, blank expression. Something else was off too, but before I could figure out what, the first spacer strode to the back of the shelter and kicked through a door I'd never noticed before.

"It's a holo-emitter all right," he called out. "Pretty badly damaged. Let me just..."

Light flashed, and Holly's features blurred and faded, leaving only a white, plastic frame.

"Holly!" I screamed, but the second man grabbed me and the pair of them forced me into the shuttle. They strapped me to the seat, muttering it was all for the best, but I refused to speak to them. Instead, I stared out the window, where I swear I saw Holly – the real Holly – staring after us as we lifted off into space.

The End," Mira finished, and looked anxiously around the crowded room.

"That is an intriguing story, Mira," Data said. "Particularly the ending. Was Holly a human girl, an AI, or a figment of Xander's imagination?"

"I don't know…" Mira said shyly, delighted and embarrassed by the commander's interest.

"Well, Mira, thank you for sharing with us," Troi said. "And thanks to all of you for participating today!"

"Are you planning to host another creativity workshop, Counselor?" Data asked as the children saved their work, stacked the padds, and headed out of the classroom.

"Oh, probably," Troi told him. "But, you know you don't have to wait for these workshops to create new works of your own, Data. Let me know what Geordi thinks of your holodeck program, OK?"

"I will, Counselor," the android assured her. "I believe the scenario will be more effective if I ask Geordi to play the part of Holmes this time. After all, as the author, I already know the ending."

"The one drawback of creating a tale of your own," Troi said, and smiled. "Thanks for coming today, Data. See you at the poker game tonight?"

"I would not miss it," he said, and headed out. The android's stride seemed lighter, his posture more natural than before. Troi had to wonder…was it the prospect of sharing his story with his friend? Or, possibly, just her imagination?

The End

References include - TNG: Masks; Schisms; Elementary, Dear Data.

What did you think? :)


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